Traditionally, industrial data systems are priced based on the number of data streams, often known as tags, that will be stored. Customers are required to sign a contract for a software license covering the number of tags that they have chosen. The large upfront fee typically included in this contract can make changing systems or testing new products prohibitive, especially for smaller companies — but the time and money spent on licenses is a major drawback for enterprises of all sizes.
Even more importantly, as business grows, it is necessary to renegotiate existing contracts to include additional data streams. This is true even if your hardware resources are sufficient to support your datasets. In short, traditional pricing models are not designed to scale with your business, but to squeeze additional profits for the vendor out of your company’s success.
TDengine: Transparent and Affordable
TDengine not only brings new technology to industrial data management — it also brings transparent, affordable pricing based on the compute resources that you require, not on arbitrary numbers of tags. In fact, our pricing plans are public information and are listed on our website.
TDengine Plans
| Cores | Tags (Estimated) | Perpetual License | Annual Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5,000 | $10,000 | $1,500 |
| 2 | 10,000 | $18,000 | $2,700 |
| 4 | 20,000 | $34,000 | $5,100 |
| 8 | 40,000 | $66,000 | $9,900 |
| 16 | 80,000 | $100,000 | $15,000 |
| 32 | 160,000 | $160,000 | $24,000 |
| 64 | 320,000 | $200,000 | $30,000 |
| 100 | 500,000 | $250,000 | $37,500 |
Canary Labs Plans
| Tags | Perpetual License | Annual Support |
|---|---|---|
| 5,500 | $14,600 | $2,628 |
| 10,000 | $22,100 | $3,978 |
| 22,500 | $43,600 | $7,848 |
| 45,000 | $79,300 | $14,274 |
| 100,000 | $135,500 | $24,390 |
| 200,000 | $198,800 | $35,784 |
| 300,000 | $248,500 | $44,730 |
| 500,000 | $397,600 | $71,568 |
Compare and Save
Let’s consider three examples: a small-scale renewables startup, a medium-sized manufacturer, and a large oil & gas company.
Small-Scale Renewables Startup
| Scenario 1: Small-Scale Renewables Startup | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tags | 10,000 | |
| Average sampling rate | 2 seconds | |
| TDengine price | Perpetual license: $10,000 | Optional annual support: $1,500 |
| Canary Labs price | Perpetual license: $22,100 | Optional annual support: $3,978 |
| You save | $12,100 up front | $2,478 per year |
Although PI System does not make prices publicly available, a 10,000-tag system was quoted in 2015 at $85,000 — you can imagine how much it would cost ten years later.
Medium-Sized Manufacturer
| Scenario 2: Medium-Sized Manufacturer | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tags | 100,000 | |
| Average sampling rate | 10 seconds | |
| TDengine price | Perpetual license: $18,000 | Optional annual support: $2,700 |
| Canary Labs price | Perpetual license: $135,500 | Optional annual support: $24,390 |
| You save | $117,500 up front | $21,690 per year |
TDengine’s core-based pricing begins to make a big impact with lower sampling rates. Unlike Canary Labs or PI System, you only pay for the compute resources you use, instead of an arbitrary number of tags.
Large-Scale Oil & Gas Operation
| Scenario 3: Large-Scale Oil & Gas Operation | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tags | 300,000 | |
| Average sampling rate | 15 seconds | |
| TDengine 4-core perpetual license | Perpetual license: $34,000 | Optional annual support: $5,100 |
| Canary Labs price for 300,000 tags | Perpetual licene: $248,500 | Optional annual support: $44,730 |
| You save | $214,500 up front | $39,630 per year |
Summary
TDengine’s transparent, resource-based pricing model saves you money no matter the scale of your operations:
- For deployments with a high sampling rate of 1 data point per tag per second, TDengine already delivers significant savings from around 20% at the 10,000-tag level to 40% at the 500,000-tag level compared with a data historian like Canary Labs.
- With lower sampling rates, your savings increase dramatically — 80% less than Canary Labs for deployments in the 100,000s of tags with an average sampling rate of 10 seconds or higher.
- PI System does not make prices public, so it is not possible to compare without contacting an AVEVA representative. However, it is well-known that PI System is even more expensive than other data historians, in one example coming in at 4x the price of Canary Labs for a 10,000 tag deployment.
Plus, TDengine does not “nickel and dime” customers by charging extra for add-ons, like PI Coresight or Datalink licenses, or Canary Labs’ OPC connector — all features of TDengine are included in the base price and available to all enterprise users.
If you need a modern solution for operational data that won’t break the bank, contact us today and schedule a demo or PoC to see how much you can save with TDengine.
